The warband, which numbered about six hundred, now gathered at the site of their grand victory. Taking the The Crypt had been a slaughter, but the fortress above it had not been so pliant. Lysa would come to learn that it took Lord Gabriel’s party ten weeks of siege to weaken the fort; and it could have lasted forty years if bread never spoiled. Fort Mayamat had sentinel over a large, flat stretch of land. Once, there was a score of houses on that land. They grew wheat on the fields and drank from a stone well. Children would play in the shadow of the citadel Now, those villages were smears of dust on the flat grass. To the back of the fortress was Mt. Mayamat, which could not be scaled but by the billy goat’s hoof, and which was raised by Cothon’s talon when the world was made. Cothon would be the eagle-god, the god of the land and sky. Or so said the priests of the north.
No matter what the priests said, though, Fort Mayamat had been taken. The courtyard was huge, and men made camp among its flats. Four gigantic walls, still stained with blood, kept them inward. White tents, tinted gray by months of travel, thrust their peaks skyward. Smoke billowed out from a dozen camp fires, heavy with the scent of meat, before disappearing into the evening sky. Loot was being divided amongst the soldiers - plundered arms, newly-dented helms - and so the camp was alight with chatter and clatter and the clinking of mail. The rest of the men, Lysa gandered, were inside the halls of the fortress itself, singing the sword-song to those few enemies who had survived, or gathering whatever jewels and treasures the place hid. The foe’s servants would be made into Lord Gabriel’s servants. The foe’s retainers would be made into prisoners, who for a sum would be ransomed back to their families, and who would fuel the first taxes of war: Food, water, and weapons. Everything the living needed to continue their wastefulness.
The second tax of war was shared ‘tween living and dead, though, and it was the tax of life. That evening, there was a show about paying it. At the time, Lysa had been sitting on the edge of the encampment, feeling the warmth of a campfire which was nothing like the heat of a poker. These plains were chilly at best, and the rags she had been given did little to defend her from its bite, so she stuck close to the tongues of fire. Her thin frame rattled with each gust of wind, and not for the first time, she regretted leaving her homeland. There, cold had been a solely nocturnal phenomenon. This evening, there was nothing she could demand but sleep. Guarding the sorceress was one of Lord Gabriel’s most loyal warriors, whose name had already slipped her mind. Alonso the hound had followed his master.
Here is what happened: The warrior pointed upward, toward the battlement, telling some dumb joke. Standing up there on the wall were three men a girl: Lord Gabriel, Sir Alonso (now brandishing a voulge, sharpened so that the sunset glinted off its edge), a stranger, and the Princess. At such a distance Lysa could not decipher much about the stranger but for his plate armor and his bloodied brow and his silvery beard. The Princess was latched to Lord Gabriel’s side - but really, she was watching Lysa.
The gaze was invisible but more intense than any other. An expectant, pliant gaze, it was. Good. The next few moments passed quick; Lord Gabriel announced that the fort’s commander had been captured, but that the noble lord had escaped, but he wouldn’t run for long because all traitors are cursed with the legs of pigs. Then he sent the stranger to his knees, and then the stranger said that the gods would ruin all of Lord Gabriel’s men, then Alonso took a step back and raised his mighty arms and brought down the blade which decapitated him. His head fell over the battlements. Like the trail of a comet did that silver beard follow above.
It landed in front of the entrance to “The Crypt” - a pair of gigantic iron doors, engraved to depict wailing figures on torture devices. There were many myths surrounding the creation of The Crypt, and Lysa’s torturer had spoken all of them. Some rumor that Lord Loretto I - the founder of Lorancia - had built them to punish the stoneskin tribes. Others say that the Old Thirteen themselves - the dark, unspeakable gods - had hewn The Crypt out of the wet earth, knowing that humans would use the space only to further each other’s pain. The truth of it, Lysa did not know, and she did not want to think about that place any longer. Soldiers were scrambling to retrieve the fallen head.
“Such an ugly affair, isn’t it?” Said a meek voice from nowhere.
A glance around did not reveal the source of the sound - and Gabriel’s warrior seemed similarly confused. It was though the shadows themselves had spoken. And perhaps they had, because a moment later, a new shape emerged before Lysa’s humble fire: It was dark, swaddled like a babe in the essence of the night, its cloaks fluttering softly in the wind and smoke. Its face was pale and crooked - and crooked too was its back. One shoulder rose o’er the other, and the head emerged from the cloaks at a tilted angle. Its hideous visage was partly brightened by a friendly smile and a whimsical cane (which was carved to depict woodland creatures). The strange shape sat down on the bare grass to Lysa’s side.
“You are the hunchback,” spoke the necromancer, “Lord Gabriel mentioned you; you told him the cell of the princess, but in truth the cell was mine. Accident or no, I thank you for freeing me. I am called Lysa of Carel. You?”
“Oh, good Lysa of Carel, you really will find no use for my name, though I’ll tell it besides. I am called the Frog, and always have been.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Lysa, still not entirely familiar with the northern tongues, raised an eyebrow, “Are frogs not a sort of watery beast?”
“You’re right, they are. His Lordship found me on the bank o’ the river, a wailing babe. He was just a boy then, but his father gave me shelter, and so I am a servant - as are you, from what I have heard. The men whisper that you rose the princess from death - snatched her from the reaper’s own hand. Is it so?”
She clenched her jaw. Her practice was not one she would ere speak aloud in the years before the five. But things had shifted; the world spun the wrong way ‘round. Baphosarex was dead, she was free (the sun was hitting her face, then, dancing in her curled locks), and a want-to-be-king had bid her to work the dark magicks. But the frog before her - she felt an air about him that lended itself well to secret words.
“Aye, it's so. I’ve not had a word with her since, she’s been so ensnared in her father’s love. Though, it is not thanks for which I perform. I, too, am Lord Gabriel’s servant; he bid me so at the site of my rescue.”
“Your accent, Madam, you’re from…?”
“The south.”
“Well, I’d guess as much to look at you. But where, thither? You're not the shade of a Daji, aye, nor have you a hint of the dwarven stature, or the voice of a Myrinlander… “
Another raised eyebrow did this earn from her - it seemed that very few northerners bothered to make a distinction between the southern empires, just as she rarely bothered to distinguish one northman fief from another. Perhaps this “Frog” was not bad for conversation - which was more than could be said of Alonso. She found herself disarmed - and speaking much too easily.
“Me, and my voice, are from Dajia,” she told him, “My shade is owed to your own kin, of this land. A merchant, or perhaps a pillaging warrior came seeking his gain, and stole into my mother’s hut, and I am the result of his horribleness. You are among the few to ere learn such of me - be careful with your knowledge, Frog, for what else is there to be careful with?”
Frog nodded, a grave weight upon his upjumped shoulder, “You speak wisely, Madam; wiser than a man speaks. Although if a man speaks that you are wiser than he, and all men are compared to you a fool, then that fool would be wrong, which would therefore make him right, which would in turn make him wrong again-”
“Wrinkle not my brain. I have asked my question of your name, and you of my race. Knowledge needs caution, but so too does flattery. Do you seek another token? I cannot rise another life tonight - the ritual cannot always be done so quick.”
That was a half-lie. She would not be able to cast another spell today - the two she earlier cast had, with the effort needed to draw upon the magick organism, exhausted her utterly. It would take some deal of mental exercise, she knew, to improve her casting. Once she had real power - once she had stolen it from the hands of her new captors - two spells a day would simply not suffice. One troop per sunset was a rate which even a novice would not abide by. Perhaps Lysa was a stranger woman, still, because Mistress Hate embraced her then, whispering sweet words in her ear. Look what they have done to you. Look at what they have deprived you of. The torturer stole what Baphosarex taught you. Alonso stole the life of the torturer - that life was yours to take.
Mistress Hate fled at the sound of Frog’s voice, “I need nothing more of you. To be introduced to you - that will do nicely, at this time. I welcome you to this company - though I doubt you’ll be a warrior, you'll be a fine helper. You’ve already helped Princess Lucia more than I can attest to having helped her, and I’ve been her peon for years. Ah, and look, she ventures hither!”
The Princess of House Velenzi (who was named Lucia, apparently), was approaching the campfire now, her gaze set the same as it had been on the battlement. In the midst of the previous conversation, she and her father had come down from there, while Alonso staked the body up to display. Her every motion drew looks; these men had been deprived of women for a long while, now, and very few would dare ogle a southerner (and a witch besides). But the Princess? Her beauty was utterly resplendent; her skin ghost-pale, her redhair braided like a single, dangling intestine, her nails freshly painted a poisonous purple. Lysa did not consider herself fond of women, but it was impossible to deny the approaching gemstone. Lysa turned to Frog, hoping to gauge his reaction, but found him absent. Sneaky blighter.
Princess Lucia lingered on the edge of the firelight, ‘till Lysa motioned her to sit. With a few measured steps, she did, rearranging her dirtied skirts. Then, she waited patiently, and looked rather clueless about much of anything. This automatic return to Lysa - it would have to be ironed out. The necromancer took a deep breath, and per the command of the Princess, Gabriel’s warrior was dismissed.
Once he had disappeared among the tents to seek ale, Lysa spoke plainly to the daughter of His Lordship: “Tell me who your father is.”
“You are my father,” said the Princess, blinking with dull eyes.
“No, I am not. Think deeply - you’ve still got the brain left for that, no? Tell me who raised you before you died. Who took you from the place of nothingness, and placed you in the womb of your birther?”
Princess Lucia tilted her head, “Lord Gabriel…?”
“Yes,” Lysa nodded, a smile twitching on her lips, “You’re a clever one, aren’t you? Now, tell me everything you can about this civil war - and how you think we’ll make its victory our own.”